


L is for Library

by OtakuElf



Series: YADAA (Yet Another Dragon Age Alphabet) [12]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Kinloch Hold Circle Library, Librarians, Libraries, Mages, Qunari, Rite of Tranquility, Shaperate, Templars, Tevinter Imperium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:55:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3734704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtakuElf/pseuds/OtakuElf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to Lunamoth116 for beta-reading!</p>
    </blockquote>





	L is for Library

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Lunamoth116 for beta-reading!

People do not understand what it means to be a librarian. It’s all “la la la likes books” and “ne ne ne must be silent!” in a fictional library. Hysterical. The librarian must always be bespectacled and prim, out of touch with society, hair of an old-fashioned cut - often twisted up into a bun. As for gender? Well, it depends on the time period. Men predominated ages ago. Women are the norm now. Except in the upper echelons of management, for which library boards seem to favor males if at all possible. Females, they seem to think, could not handle the pressures of managing so many employees, or handling the finances. Women, it seems, can not say, "no". I suggest you attempt to proposition Knights Templar Janess or Lydia if you believe that. Be prepared for bruising.

Well, in the library at Kinloch Hold Circle, there are few employees. Those who do work there tend to be Tranquil. Sometimes that is an issue. If a problem comes up that requires creativity and skill to manage, do not expect a mage who has undergone the Rite of Tranquility to take care of it. Stuck in the patterns from their previous life, throwing them into a crisis is like dropping a moving log into the fire. It tends to spread the flame instead of calming it.

I am, of course, not Tranquil. I am a mage. I have been at the Circle all of my life, that I can remember. Chantry-born, of course. In all probability I was the result of a union between a Circle mage and either another mage or a templar. When they say that those irregularities are discreet and kept secret, what they do mean is that they have chosen not to have a record of where that irregularity went. Whether to a Chantry farm, one of the orphans’ homes in a large city, or fostered to a country family. In all my years, it seems that the fostered children might just be the best adjusted. There are people out there who are desperate for the chance at a child. Children, in a farming community, mean workers who will take care of the land now, and take care of the elderly parents later.

At Kinloch, as has been famously quoted in historical literature, there is a lot of kissing going on. I do my best to keep anything further out of the library. For a number of reasons, not first of which is that those types of liaisons should be given the privacy they deserve.

My library - and it is my library, no matter what Greagoir says - takes up a goodly portion of the first floor of the Circle. We are high enough above the lake that flooding will not creep up into my rooms and onto my shelving. Though the storage caverns below do get a bit wet. And spidery. Other than the servants’ stairs, used predominantly by the Tranquil, reaching anything inside the tower except the apprentices’ dormitories or the reception hall requires passing through the library. We see a lot of traffic.

This begs the question: “Surely there are better places to place a library that would be less likely to disturb serious researchers?” To this I can only say, “A library is a community, filled with all types of people. It’s good for it to be available to all.”

Which is true. But by all, we mean a hugely diverse population. Because not only do the mages, templars, and Tranquil use the Kinloch Hold library, but we’ve had a Dalish or two, dwarves, one Qunari, and any number of unsavory people petitioning the Knight-Commander for use. The Hero of Ferelden brought in his enormous mabari, twice over the years. Fortunately, it did not chase the tower cats.

Our library was first organized by a mage named Fortunatus over three centuries ago. He had no method. But he did have the willingness to bully his mages into turning over their handwritten scripts to be shared by all. Later, when movable type was invented, this boon to scholarship and bane to literary criticism ensured that the shelves of the collection remained well-filled. Fortunatus is no longer with us except in spirit. Not literally. We do have ghosts, but he is not one of them.

Ghosts can get to be a problem in a building as old as this ancient Avaar ruin. No one has ever finished cataloging the hidden passages here. From time to time someone presses the wrong (or the right - depends on your viewpoint) piece of stonework, and discovers yet another dead body. By which I mean skeletal remains. Hardly ever a fresh corpse. Well, now that is.

After the Hero of Ferelden’s first visit, we were finding decaying bodies for a year and a day. Before you lay blame at the Hero’s feet, he did not leave all of them. Or some he may have left, but he did not kill them the first time. That was Uldred.

Uldred was a petty, annoying mage who never returned his books to the library in a timely fashion. If a tome was interesting to him, he would secrete it away in the study in his room. It’s possible that I should have noticed his interest in the history of blood magic. It was probably there in the pattern of his correspondence - which was up to the templars to vet - and in his selection of materials for study. Not my business to judge or pre-select for my mages. Suffice it to say, however, that it is not the librarian’s task to monitor what a mage is reading. No, I have never even told Greagoir when one of the apprentices or junior mages is sniffing around the restricted section. (This does not mean that I have not taken an interest in the tears and fears of the children - it means that I have ensured that they receive help from the best possible resource here in the tower, whether that is Irving, Wynne, one of the templars, or another person. I have brought in the groundskeeper and cook on occasion. There is always someone who can help).

Uldred, though...he was pushy. Never had an issue with using his standing among the Senior Enchanters to grab the new titles, secure the most comfortable study table, or in browbeating some apprentice into “helping” him with his research. There were rumours at one point that he had plagiarized some of his writings, but it was never proven that he had stolen a junior’s work. Dealing with those irritations was all part of living in a Circle, a fairly closed community. In short, I had an apprentice steal the works back. She was good. Had the shortest Harrowing on record. Unfortunately Amell got involved trying to help an apprentice who used blood magic to escape. She was sent to Aeonar. As was Jowan, the blood mage, after he was caught. Still, neither of them caused a fraction of the problems Uldred did.

His abominations and undead, demons and shades were highly annoying. To begin with, there is a substantial use of energy in summoning these creatures. It leaches the heat from the very stones around the summoning. Severe changes in temperature are not good for books. They crack and warp the bindings, and damage the pages. Nor are the fireballs that seem to follow in the wake of these symptoms of blood magic good for anything involving paper.

Which reminds me of a time when I discovered one of the Senior Enchanters attempting to teach a class of apprentices fire magic in one of the stalls of the library. Mages are supposed to be intelligent. This complete lack of common sense has almost led me to despair that we mages will ever be taken seriously, or treated as anything other than the children some enchanters insist it is their prerogative to be. In any case, the children were highly amused by my use of selected heat ranges of fireballs to show the enchanter the error of his ways. Imagine if he’d been using water or ice spells! The damage to the inks, the papers, the bindings and covers!

His excuse? It was raining outside in the courtyard, and he did not want the apprentices to catch cold. Unbelievable. There are always the storage caverns or the front hall if he needed more space. The classrooms, while they have no glass in the windows to keep out the rain, are very much large enough to demonstrate ranged attacks.

Well, as you can see, I have many issues to work with. From vandalism to the books by humorists or those seeking to discredit alternative schools, to Tranquil copying recipes using any piece of paper at hand, to templars who feel that their right to censor is greater than a library’s right to provide information.

Mostly censorship is not as big an issue as one would think. There are the Chantry-sanctioned items that we keep in the restricted area. These are under such wards and locks as have been deemed necessary by the Seekers. It is no longer a death sentence to keep a book on common anatomy. Information on blood magic is rarely allowed. Some say that after Uldred’s uprising it makes sense. As an information professional, I say that we need to have correct and exact information available for when it is required, regardless of its sensitivity. Or perhaps because of it.

Better to know what to guard against than to repeatedly rediscover the mistakes of a foolish few. Greagoir and I have had this argument many times. Keeping information hidden does not guarantee it will not be even more popular because of the sanction. Irving and I have argued this as well. Irving is of the opinion that a greater understanding of the human body is necessary for healers to do their job well. I do not argue that. I do not feel that many of the books out of Tevinter will help with healing.

Tevinter tomes tend to be bound in blood and terror. Reading them, it is easily understood that the experimentation from which this information is derived is involuntary, and obtained through torture. One recent scroll described etching a slave’s body with an extremely sharp knife, and then pouring the spellwork, runes and other toxics, into the bloody wounds. This is not healthy medical practice. Where does one draw the line, though? When much of surgery outside the tower consists of a man with a firm hand on a saw?

As I was saying, Tevinter tomes tend to be bound in blood and terror. Literally. Human, elf, dwarf, and most recently Qunari skin bindings for their books seem to be all the rage (no demonic pun intended). It’s difficult enough keeping insects from the calfskin-covered volumes. These alternatively-skinned books do not last, or keep well. So far as I have been able to determine, there is no actual spellcasting reason for the books to be so bound. It is the ghoulish nature of the publishers, and the willingness of the Tevene public for gory gratification, that causes the printers to churn these items out. The issues with temperature changes mentioned before? Even worse for books bound in human skin. Insects love them. They can’t be replaced either - I have no access nor interest in restoring them. The historical accuracy of having a Tevene volume rebound in Qunari skin is not worth the agony of trying to get such a request past Irving and Greagoir, let alone trying to justify funding for the effort. To say nothing of the problems it would cause in our diplomatic relationship with the Qunari. 

Dwarven books, the ones with stone covers, keep rather well. They do tend to cause the shelving to sag with their weight. We do have a collection of titles from the Shaperate in Orzammar. Copies, of course. Mostly solemn histories of the Paragons and a few volumes about rune working with lyrium. Anything recent detailing the current political situation has been written topside (as the dwarves say) and printed using regular Fereldan techniques. King Bhelen is not keen on tales about his rule being widely spread. There have been several officially sanctioned works, badly written, and obviously propaganda, which have been gifted to the Circle courtesy of the Orzammarian embassy in Denerim. We have one scholar devoted to the dwarven culture who has been in his element writing comparisons and critiques. He has not managed to find a publisher quite yet. He insists that the Carta is blocking his attempts to publish. For what reason, he cannot say.

One of our scholars believes that the Shaperate lore cannot be trusted as accurate either. He has traveled the Deep Roads and found disturbing signs of dwarven attempts to hide historical truths, some of which have to do with the history of the Elvhenar. The Dalish, as the descendents of Arlathan, have been attempting to replicate much of what is passed down through oral tradition. They do not teach their children from written works. The scholar I mentioned before, Florian Phineas Horatio Aldebrant, Esquire (although he is not actually an esquire. I believe his parents literally named him Esquire), has done extensive research into the history of Arlathan, as well as work in the field. He has copied a book hoarded - well, perhaps guarded is a better word - by the Dalish. The copy is in our collection now. He has told me that were it not for the Hero of Ferelden, he would never have been allowed to read the book, let alone study it, or copy the work. Few items from that time survive, and even fewer of their books.

As for works by the Qunari, there are none available. Not even copies of the Qun are allowed to travel beyond their grasp. What materials we have are tertiary accounts, taken from those who have heard others speak phrases in Qunari, translations, and commentary. Like the Dalish, the Qunari transfer this information through the oral tradition. Living by the Qun is more important, apparently, than reading about it. There is a rumored text, written by Koslun, the man who created their system of morality, that surfaced in Kirkwall. The Qunari had been searching for this book, and that was the reason for their extended stay in the that Free Marches city. It was apparently returned to the Qunari, who then left, after much devastation and the decapitation of the viscount. Needless to say, the cost of such a work outweighs its usefulness to the mages of the Circle here.

The collection here includes such works as described above, as well as research into the Avaar, the Chasind, the Grey Wardens, and other interesting subcultures. In addition to our archives, we collect artifacts of historical and cultural significance. One of the statues would speak to individuals moving through the library. When that behavior became too distracting, the statue was moved down into the vaults. Finn tells me that it no longer speaks. We kept a record for years of its utterances, which are to be found in the anthropology section of the library.

How would you find that section? I can see how you might feel some consternation at the number of books on these shelves. They do go about twenty feet up the wall, and cover every inch of wall space. There is a catalog, enchanted to highlight whatever item you are interested in reading. Simply notify the catalog, then walk to find the glimmer showing you where the item is shelved. Misshelving will throw the catalog off. Yes, we have had mis-shelving by the Tranquil. Removing their connection to the Fade does not endow them with intellect they might have missed out on before the Rite. Being a mage does _not_ mean that one is gifted with intelligence, nor that one prizes brains over other attributes.

It has taken decades of training to begin to understand the system here. One must be dedicated to become a librarian, and my apprenticeship took place under the previous Senior Enchanter, who had worked here for half a century and was on the verge of becoming a trifle lyrium-addled. That might explain why some traces of runework appear from time to time, and touching the end of the apprentices’ table causes sparking. Still and all, it is a wonderful place to work. Lively, and filled with the unexpected! I do love it, as you might have noticed by how I do prattle on! Now, if you will excuse me, I must head off that tryst in the back before it goes too far!


End file.
